Tracking the talent, after the diaspora.

Food and Drink

August 20, 2007

It's no secret that I'm a pilgrim to chef Mario Batali's mecca. But even I was surprised to be the first patron to cross Osteria Mozza's threshold on opening day.

Upon
entering, the excitement and anticipation is palpable, as if everyone
snapped into place moments before. All eyes are on the "walk-ins" as we
approach the dazzling white marble Mozzarella bar at 5:45 pm. The
dapperly appointed servers at attention, eager chefs at the bar, a
smiling chef Nancy Silverton, and a flushed pony-tailed chef Mario Batali (sporting a pink shirt and orange crocs) all track our first reactions.

The
space feels sophisticated and welcoming, with an expanse of silvery
sage blue walls up to vast airy ceilings. Mario recalls the feeling you
get in Grand Central Station, amidst all the hustle-and-bustle -- which
this restaurant is sure to see -- when you look up and sense the
grandiosity of the space as it absorbs the noise around you.

Immediately,
we're greeted with a Mozzarella rollatini with capers, pesto, tomatoes
and olives, and we celebrate our good fortune with a glass of Prosecco.
The late afternoon sun ambiently enhances the crystal glasses, baroque
wine decanters, gleaming silver, and clean white linens that dot the
setting.

The
menu offers a range of Antipasti, specialties from the Mozzarella bar,
Primi, Secondi and Contorni inspired by the Bologna region in Italy. To
start, we select Prosciutto di Parma and melon with extra virgin olive
oil. The Antipasti is composed before our eyes. The melon is snatched
from one of the many eclectic still-life-esque bowls on top of the
counter. On the back counter of the mozzarella bar sits the Osteria's
"prestige piece" -- a glorious fire engine red antique Berkel deli meat slicer, loaded with a gorgeous leg of prosciutto and primed for thin slicing.

The
meltaway proscuitto and drippingly succulent sweet melon combination is
a dream. We learn the melons were sourced on Wednesday at the Santa Monica Farmers' Market and are of the Charentais variety.

Our next two dishes are specialties from the Mozzarella bar and both champion Burrata cheese. With renowned chef Nancy Silverton in command of her celebrated station, we know we're in store for some incredible compositions. The
Burricotti, braised artichokes, pine nuts, currants and mint pesto on
grilled bread is stunning in terms of its flowery presentation and
multidimensional taste.

For
the Primi course, our party-of-three splits two classic pastas from
Mario's arsenal: Orechiette with sausage and Swiss chard, and
Agnolotti, burro e salvia. Both are sublime fresh pastas. The perfect
flavor balance and texture of the Orechiette -- finished with a trail
of breadcrumbs -- trips us all out to the moon and back. This may be
the best rendition of this pasta we've ever tasted.

The
Agnolotti defines decadence with its silken filling of chicken,
pancetta, and mortadella spiked with nutmeg in a substantial
saged-scented butter sauce. (Note: the pasta portions seen in our
photos have been split three ways -- they are normally much larger.)

Local
Santa Barbara Spot Prawns are standouts on the Secondi menu. They
arrive whole in an outrageous "al diovolo" sauce that we attempt to
break down, crowned with shaved scallions. Turns out it's an amazingly
fresh and piquant combination of garlic, white wine, red Fresno chiles, passato di pomodoro, and basil.

After
stammering over braised or grilled beef, we opt for the Grilled Beef
Tagliatta, rucola and Parmigiano with aceto balsamic. Such high quality
ingredients shine here, especially the incredibly tender and flavorful
beef.Dinner
at the Mozzarella bar is an engaging and exciting scene. If you are
enthralled by the glory of food preparation, then I highly recommend
sitting here in the center of the action.

Honestly,
what more could you ask for in a Los Angeles Osteria? And by partnering
with chef Nancy Silverton, team Batali and Bastianich ensure
authenticity with the best of LA's local purveyors and ingredients.PHOTOS BY BRETT CODY ROGERS

April 20, 2007

I was just musing over the pet food recall, and I stumbled on this post from a great blog called Fagistan,
about how it's fucked up to feed dogs cheap, crappy food. Mr. Fagistan
says that everyone knows wheat gluten is shitty for you, so why don't
people get off their fat high-fructose-corn-syrupy asses and buy their
pets some decent food?

This hit close to home with me, because I
just recently decided I was too broke to pay for my dogs' organic food,
which after all is much healthier and more organic and special than
anything I eat on a regular basis. I thought "Science Diet food is good
enough for them. It has the word 'Science' in it, it has to be
healthy." Plus I have to drive pretty far to get my special expensive
food, and I'm extremely hassle-avoidant. So I haul home a huge bag of
the Science Diet, and my dog Potus eats it for two days and then stages
a protest, standing by her bowl and looking up at me, as if to say,
"This food is not organic, and you're a dirty whore who makes my
stomach turn even more than these foul-smelling, wretched,
chemically-polluted nuggets do."

To put it in perspective,
Potus eats apples but spits out salmon, tuna, salami and sliced ham and
she gives me that "You're a dirty whore" look when she doesn't get her
daily 3-mile walk - and honestly, I've neglected to walk her maybe once
in the past month. So it's hard to take her feelings into account in
these matters, unless you want to feel tortured around the clock over
how miserable you're making your dog by keeping her confined to a very
pleasant house and small, sunny yard, which she shares with her
confidante Bean, a friend carefully selected for her from the pound by
yours truly. (And yes, naturally, I do want to feel tortured around the clock over how miserable she is.)

Her
pal Bean does not turn up her nose at the Science Diet. Bean eats the
Science Diet with gusto, and she wags her tail and looks up at me as if
to say, "Thank you for this wonderful, nutritious meal!" She also eats
the salmon, tuna, salami and sliced ham that Potus spits out, and she
eats anything that falls onto the floor, and anything that smells
interesting or has an intriguing texture, like leaves and twigs and
that sought-after delicacy, cat shit.

It's funny, though. Bean
is so thankful, but I feel about her the way God must feel about truly
faithful Christians: I take her gratitude for granted. What I want is
for that ingrate Potus to give me a little love. So when Potus stopped
eating the Science Diet, it made me nervous, and I started to look into
the pet foods recalled in the pet food recall for the first time (I had
assumed, of course, that my expensive organic feed wasn't included)
(and it wasn't) and there's Science Diet, on the list, and there's rice
gluten in it (not wheat gluten, but even so, I hate that word, gluten!). So here I am, switching over to shitty, cheaper food just as it's being recalled. I am such a fucking asshole!

No,
their exact brand wasn't recalled. But you get the picture about me
being an asshole. So I bought another big bag of the expensive stuff.
Potus still thinks I'm a dirty whore but at least she eats her
breakfast now.

Anyway, I'm reading Fagistan and laughing, in
large part because the title of his post is "I Feed My Dog Nothing But
Cock," but just when I'm about to write to him and tell him that he's
right and I'll never feed my dog shitty food again, I discover that he
links to this blog! So then I do a search on his blog and my name
(we've already established that I'm an asshole, why hold back now?) and
I find a post where he says he wonders if I'm losing my edge!

So
what do I do in response to this notion that I'm losing my edge? I
write a very long, rambling post about the funny looks my doggies give
me and what they mean.

It's official: I have no edge. I might as
well just give in to it. From now on, this blog is going to be written
in the voice of my dog, Potus.

February 20, 2007

Attention Mozzarella-Tomato-Basil Lovers: No need to lament the state of tomatoes during these dark winter months when Mario teaches you can always resort to roasting. The slow-roasting method reveals the flavor in these seemingly pallid duds.

Of
course, you do want to go for the best tomato your market has to offer.
To me, this means some kind of hothouse cherry tomato variety.

Picky purveyors Ricky and Lesley served up a pre-Lost
viewing meal with Mario's Winter Caprese recipe as the powerful
prelude. The dish achieves something similar to that of its summertime
predecessor -- with warm, slow-roasted tomatoes, oozy mozzarella, dark
pesto dollop and toasty pinenuts -- it is appropriately of the season.

Mozza's variation includes burrata instead of mozzarella di bufala bocconcini. A delicious modification, especially if using Gioia's burrata, the local California favorite.

If
you decide to go burrata, be sure to go easy on it (this is difficult).
The key to this dish's success is the balance of its ingredients. On
our last visit to Mozza, Nancy
Silverton was not manning the mozzarella output and we received a
lavish amount of burrata in our caprese. True to the law of diminishing
returns, I realized there can be such a thing as too much burrata.

Preheat
the oven to 200 degrees F. In a medium bowl, toss the tomatoes with 1/4
cup of the olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Place cut side down
on a small baking sheet and bake for about 2 hours or until the
tomatoes are softened. Remove the tomatoes from the oven and let cool.

Transfer the cooled tomatoes to a colander and set aside to drain while you make the pesto.

Combine
the garlic and Parmigiano in a blender and pulse until the garlic is
roughly chopped. Add the basil and pulse 7 or 8 times, or until the
leaves are shredded. With the blender running, slowly add the remaining
1/2 cup of the olive oil, blending until smooth.

Toast the
pine-nuts in an 8-inch saute pan over medium heat, tossing frequently,
until golden brown, 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer to a plate to cool.

To
serve, arrange 3 tomato slices cut side down on each plate. Place a
ball of mozzarella (or scoop of burrata) in the center, and spoon 2
tablespoons of the pesto onto each ball of mozzarella. Sprinkle with
the pine nuts and garnish with the basil leaves.

Jane's Corn Casserole

Combine
corn, sour cream, butter, eggs and muffin mix in casserole dish. Place
in preheated oven at 350 for 45-60 minutes. Shake to see if it is fully
cooked -- bake until middle is baked. Add grated cheddar cheese on top.

There's a certain art to pricing menus. It's an
act of balance: price too low and your profit margins are too thin,
price too high and your margin for error is too thin. In the case of
Ocean Grill, the prominent Food Fight restaurant overcharges, and by so
doing evaporates customer patience for many missteps in planning and
execution by the servers and the kitchen.

The concept seems to be California Cuisine, or
possibly Mediterranean seafood in a business-hip mode, which turns out
to be not very hip. Electronic music from a decade ago pulses quietly
into a room done up with metal and wood and accented by sea foam and
charcoal tones. A digital aquarium--no real fish here--is exemplary of
the both sterile aesthetic and the muddled thinking of the proprietors.
A patio is open in the summer, affording a nice view of the capitol
building.

The drink lists are not particularly cogent, an
indicator of more conceptual confusion. Infused vodka cocktails jostle
with tropical rum-based frou-frou drinks and a very nice Champagne
menu. The wine list is heavily drawn from Napa and Sonoma vineyards but
there are nods to Italy, France, Argentina, and Australia. Some
standouts: the 2005 Trinchero, Mary's Vineyard in Napa, packs a heady
nose of melon and hibiscus and a crisp, complex mineral finish. The
2005 Riff Pinot Grigio, delle Venezie ($4/8/32) has a refined nose, a
citrus, dry taste and is perfect with oysters.

The oysters on the half-shell were by far the best
moments of several meals. You can choose from East or West coast on a
given night. The Dababs from Washington State were vivacious, bursting
with subtle undertones of brine and served with a mignonette of fruit
juices, rice wine vinegar, and horseradish. Beware: the cocktail sauce
was an indifferent ruination of a perfectly good oyster. Fresh shaved
horseradish with a squeeze of fresh lemon proved to the best
accompaniment.

The six Nueske's Bacon-Wrapped Day Boat Scallops
($12), served with thin slices of Granny Smith apples and an edible
orchid were an utterly bland disappointment until we realized that by
swabbing them in the sweet apple cider gastrique we could actually
improve the fish taste. The texture combination would have greatly
benefited from a touch more crispness to the bacon (but the strips are
easier to wrap around the scallops undercooked). The visual
presentation of this dish is quite beautiful, but is anyone in the
kitchen tasting the food they are sending out?

The flesh of the Flash-Fried Calamari ($10) is
excellent but is served with two poorly chosen sauces: chipotle-plum
and spicy peanut.

The Confit of Tomato Bruschetta ($8) is lifeless and unremarkable.

A Caesar Salad, priced differently in conjunction
with various entrees, hovers around $8 and was too heavily dressed,
soaked in an anchovy Caesar helped marginally by squeezing the
accompanying sliced lemons.

The entrees are generally fish or steak. You may
order a selection of fresh fishes with the sauce of your choice for
$19; the Pacific Sea Bass is a good bet. You may order a variety of
Angus Beef Tenderloins or New York Strip, all served with either a
mushroom or peppercorn sauce with a variable vegetable side; the steaks
are decent and well matched by the robust tannins of the 2003 Napa
Valley Folie a Deux Cabernet Sauvignon ($7/14/55).

You may also order a variety of specialty fish
dishes. The Sesame Crusted Ahi ($26) is prepared correctly and is a
delight, but this is really more about the chefs executing a classic
recipe--batter the sashimi steaks with egg whites, roll them in black
and white sesame seeds and pan-sear hard, slice and serve--than
innovative cooking, though the cilantro-soy reduction is a thoughtful
touch.

The Swordfish ($26), a fish many rightly feel
trepidation in ordering, is styled Vera Cruz and is quite good. The
blackened exterior sheaths a tender and flavorful interior, and the
tomato reduction atop is an excellent compliment to the spicy red beans.

The Grilled Prawns ($27) are a wonderment of
confused design. Hoison barbecue-chipotle sauce at the base felt thick
and cloying, a mound of couscous at the center wasn't expected or
tasty, the prawns themselves were prime specimens deprecated by a heavy
pomegranate treatment, and the incongruous abundance of sauteed squash
juliennes added nothing to the dish. Also, it's a Larry David/Borscht
Belt one-liner scenario, where the dish is terrible--and there aren't
enough prawns.

The service is knowledgeable and polite but
inclined to boneheaded maneuvers like taking flatware without replacing
it (it's harder to eat when you have to share a knife) and forgetting
to bring bread, then taking away the bread plates in the hope that you
won't notice you never got bread or butter while the tables next to you
enjoy both. Charging for items that weren't ordered doesn't help,
either.

When you have $28 dishes on your menu in Madison,
the entire experience had better be pretty special on some level. And
you need to serve bread and provide utensils. Lunch at Ocean Grill is a
better option than dinner as the pain of the bill is somewhat
mitigated, but a restaurant that can't stand on its dinner menu isn't
playing for keeps.

November 06, 2006

Ravioli Role Reversal

It's
rare that a ravioli takes me by such surprise. It's even more rare when
it takes place at a British gastropub. This was the case of the Tomato
Basil Ravioli served at the Village Pub in Barnsely -- a picturesque village in the Cotswolds.

The
homemade ravioli are unassuming in appearance: delicate pouches glisten
with a thin coating of parmesean cream sauce, monochrome and rather
"vanilla" in presentation. But upon first bite, the pouch explodes with
an intense tomato basil flavor. It's the inverse of what you'd expect,
with a small but potent amount of "sauce" in the filling. I found it
outstanding.

October 26, 2006

First, an announcement. There is a new member of the thau family! Introducing..... Plectroctena thaui! This stunning specimen from Cameroon was discovered by Brian Fisher, the Overlord of Antweb. He's discovered so many new species of ants, he must have run out of people to name them after. Lucky for me!

We pulled down the wallpaper in the soon-to-be nursery (no, not for the ant...). After seeing what was under there, we decided to hire professionals to fix up the crumbling plaster. Sadly, we'll be covering up some Victorian era curly-cues, but they're pretty faded.

Beer

Our latest batch of beer is brewing. Here's the trub. I just love saying that - trub.

Wine

Being
equal opportunity drinkers, we could not forsake the grape. Our first
venture into oenology is, in theory, a syrah. We purchased a box of Moments at our local grain and hops supplier, San Francisco Brewcraft. It comes with something like a sack of blood and a baggie of wood chips.Mix
them together, and poof they're wine. As with any project, there's a
good deal of fussing and checking. I needed to check the specific
gravity of the concoction a couple of days ago and took a sniff and a swallow and here's the result. Keep your fingers crossed, especially if you think you might be asked to drink this stuff.

And
finally, to finish September off right, we went to see "A Horror Horde
of Crawl-And-Crush Giants Clawing Out of the Earth's Steaming Depths"
in the Presidio. They invited us out to a picnic and released upon us.... THEM! But, before they unleashed the horror, we were treated tosome nice militaristic horn blowing, just to get us in the mood.

October 03, 2006

Hildon: Water of Choice

They ship it in by the palette at the French Laundry in Yountville, CA. It's the staple "fizzy or flat" at Barnsley House and Village Pub in the Cotswolds. Lately, I've been seeing Hildon's regal blue label pop up in all the right places.

I have yet to see it on the shelves in the states, but my Brit pals found my fascination with the high-class water positively dull. "I dunno, it's been around for years," one friend told me. To me, even the incidentals are interesting.

At first the allure is definitely in the design of the glass bottle and the label. Clean lines, elegant type and a golden crest smack of royal officialdom or some kind of sanctioned purity. Then the quality comes through in the taste and feel of the water. You can actually detect a difference. Needless to say, I bought Hildon hook, line and sinker.